CalevPhoto

Why aren’t you bugging me?

OK, OK, so it’s been awhile since I have posted a decent old fashioned bug shot.  The reality is between being extremely busy and having rather lousy weather here I haven’t taken too many bug shots lately.  I hope to change this soon.  Last night we had a ton of midges get into the house during a party – as if they were wondering where the heck I was.

This shot was taken a few months ago by the ponds outside my office.  I spent some time photographing one stink bug and when I found another on a different leaf – I figured – why not?

They stayed together for about thirty seconds – but this was long enough to get a decent shot.  They didn’t seem too offended by one another – but soon went their separate ways.

Stink bugs are one of my favorite insects to photograph as they are so colorful.

Lots and lots of ants

I’m sure all of us have walked by a dropped fruit on the ground and have seen a pile of ants warming around it.  I have seen this countless times, but never when I happened to have my camera and MP-E 65 on me.  Several days ago, I was lucky.

From some research on the Internet, I believe this is Tetramorium caespitum, or the standard pavement ant.  They are famous for getting in fights with other colonies, though I do not believe that is what is occurring here.

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Aphids in the wild

During the summer, pretty much whenever I want to find aphids I can find them.  They are always on our rose bushes and I use no insecticides to get rid of them.  When I find a ladybug in the yard, I move it to the rose bushes to trim the aphids a bit - though I haven’t found a ladybug yet this year.  It is tempting to buy them in the store but I have read that these are not native ladybugs and will therefore just fly away and provide little benefit to the garden.

Still, it was a welcome sight to find some aphids in the wild this weekend while shooting near some ponds that are next to the building where I work.

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Flies as pollinators

All of us are very familiar with the service that bees perform for us in our yards.  Many of us are also familiar that there are a great number of other things that also pollinate flowers - such as some species of bats.  In the past I have read that some flies also pollinate flowers, but it certainly was strange actually seeing one do it.

I found a number of these flies on a bank of yellow flowers next to a small stream.  I must admit that even after attempting to look it up, I have no idea what type of fly it is.  At first I thought it was a face fly, but according to what I read face flies are quite a bit bigger than this one.

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Attack of the baby spiders!

While photographing a house in Seattle a few weeks ago, my kids found a ton of baby spiders that had just hatched on the stairs leading up to the house.  Of course I could not resist getting some photos!  Here is the group of spiders to give you an idea how many there were.

A little bit of research at bugguide.net revealed that these are baby orb weaver spiders.  Everywhere around the stairs they were spinning webs.  They were crawling on the ground and a few of them even tried to create a nest on my camera!  Of course, I couldn’t resist getting a closer look at them.

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Who said aphids can’t be funny?

I must admit that among the more hilarious pictures in the world, insects are rarely mentioned.  However, once in awhile I do find a rather amusing shot and more often than not it occurs with aphids.  I do not believe that aphids consider themselves to be amusing, but once in awhile I catch an aphid in a pose that does look a bit strange.

Although aphids stay rather still for most shots, they are not one of the easier insects to photograph.  For one, they are extremely small and often require a magnification of 5x for a good shot.  This means that the viewfinder is extremely dark and the lens is shaky.  The also do move, so tracking can be slightly tricky at times.

Here is an aphid family portrait.

Amazingly, an adult ladybug can eat up to sixty of these a day!  I am currently looking for some lady bugs, as Nelya prefers that the aphids stay away from her roses, but I won’t let her use insecticides on them.

While they certainly aren’t a beneficial insect, they do provide some amusement!

Time for some bees

During the recent warm weather, I figured it would be nice to get out there and take some bee shots.  This also gave me a chance to work with my 180mm macro, which has lately been ignored in favor of the MP-E 65.  While the MP-E 65 is an amazing lens, for things like bees the 180L is far more appropriate.

I had hoped to catch a bee in flight, but alas the only shots I got were too OOF.  I could have probably made my life easier by not trying to get the shot at 1:1, but then it wouldn’t have looked as interesting!  From past experience, I have found it’s better to try to take an amazing shot and fail than to take several mediocre shots.

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The release of the queens

Several weekends ago, my wife asked me to weed in our backyard.  I obliged, but on my way to get some equipment, I noticed something very unusual in the backyard.  The carpenter ant colony was releasing their queens and males.

First, I am not a myrmecologist and my knowledge of ants and carpenter ants comes from reading several books and observing them in my backyard.  Therefore, some of the information below may be incorrect.  If you know some of it to be false, please let me know and I will gladly correct it.

To be honest, I’m not sure if all of them were queens, all were males, or if there was a mix, but I suspect the latter.  Their clearly were smaller winged ants and larger ones.  I watched and photographed the phenomenon for a good hour.  While in my opinion none of the shots are great on their own, altogether the tell a very interesting story.

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Progression in macro insect photography

For a fun post, I thought I would cover the progression that a macro photography typically makes.  This covers both where I have started as well as where I hope to go.

Stage 1

In this stage, you can recognize what insect the photo is of.  With these shots, you feel it is extremely cool that you caught the insect on camera.  What you miss is that the framing may be awful, the insect is out of focus, and the lighting may be poor.

Here is a good example from when I first bought my camera.  You can see that this is a fly, but it is looking the wrong way, is too small for this shot, and should not be centered in the viewfinder.  The focus could also be improved.

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Why I’m no fun at barbecues

Last weekend some friends of ours had us over for a barbecue.  Their property is rather wooded and I had my camera with me from a recent real estate shoot.  Of course, I was curious, so I took a little stroll to see what I could find.

I noticed that there were quite a few flies that were hanging out on ferns.  When I approached them, they did not flinch too much so I knew that I had a good thing going.  I ran back and grabbed my camera to get some shots.

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